Does your Employer Match Gifts Already?
If you are giving to charity, and haven’t asked your employer if they match contributions, you may be leaving money for your favorite causes on the table. Online lists of employers are often provided by individuals charities in different locales and ways to check employers who match gifts would be very welcome. Please email me or add them as a comment.
Be aware that your employer might have restrictions on how and when they match gifts. The company probably has some written guidelines, but here are a few tips to take advantage of their generosity:
- Don’t wait. There might be a deadline on how long after your gift you can ask for a match.
- Charity Check. Most employers have restrictions on the kinds of charities to which they will provide matching gifts. Community organizations and educational institutions are usually okay, religious or political organizations are not.
- Friends with Benefits? Most employers do not allow matching gifts that benefit the employee. For example, you wouldn’t want to submit a gift you made and expect the match to get you from the $100 “friend” level to the $200 “supporter” level so you can get those free tickets to a taping of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.”
- Order Up. Most employers have a limit to the dollar amount they will match for each employee. You may want to be careful in the order you submit gifts to be matched, to make sure the ones you care about most get matched before you reach your limit.
No Matching Gifts Program? Try This
According to a 2006 article published by the Philanthropy Journal,
“Large corporations are competing more intensely than ever for top talent, and one of the questions that employees are beginning to ask is, ‘What is the company’s commitment to the communities it serves?’” he says. “It’s becoming a real competitive advantage in employee attraction and retention to have a robust community impact program.”
Clearly, an employee matching program can be a valuable employee benefit. So why not ask your employer–of any size–if they would consider starting one. Some help to get you and them thinking about it:
- The most basic requirement is generally that employee gifts to be matched must be made to 501(c)(3) public charities. (You can check this through the online version of IRS publication 78. )
- You may want to suggest a minimum gift size (often $25) and maximum matching total (which often ranges from $100 to over $1000 for senior employees) so the company knows up front what their total commitment could be.
- Companies often feel more comfortable eliminating religious organizations to avoid controversy.
- Employees may need to be with the company for a certain amount of time (a month? a year?) before this benefit kicks in.
- Need a form and a process? Try this form from HR.BLR
- For more on the legal and administrative requirements, you may want to review this page from the Council on Foundations.
- For more on companies working with matching programs check out this article from The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Finding your Employer
- National, searchable database of employers from HEP Development Services
- Link to a PDF of a bunch of companies that have a matching gift program provided by the Multiple Sclerosis Society
- Others resources or tips for getting a program starting in your workplace?
Tags: charity, employee matching program, matching gifts, philanthropy, workplace philanthropy
